Executive president of Integrare, Maria Hyeronides Barros DeLima, was also present, and represented Brazil as a signatory on the document. She said, "This partnership will allow Brazilian business entrepreneurs to shake hands with Americans who are way ahead and have so much to teach. Brazilians will also have a chance to enter the walls of the corporate world in Brazil and to do business globally. This is a victory for CBCF, Integrare, the Black community and natives and disabled entrepreneurs. It is definitely a global victory!"
The average cost of both public and private medical schools in the U.S. can exceed $50,000 annually. The cost of medical school in the United States can leave most graduates in a pool of debt soon after graduation. These exorbitant tuition fees alone can make the idea of going to medical school for members of poor communities seemingly unrealistic and even nonexistent in some cases.
What even serious individuals must note is that 40 or 50 years ago, the kind of jobs that illegal immigrants migrate towards today are the same positions that African Americans were relegated to. How else can we explain highly educated African Americans, even some with Ph.D's, being forced to work at the post office or as a hotel waiter. The barriers for African Americans were Jim Crow; for Hispanics or Latinos fleeing Mexico, El Salvador, Guatamala or other South American countries, it is the wretched poverty in those countries. For them, such jobs are a "step up" from what they had to accept in their country.
[Weldon J. Rougeau] met with Henrique Ulbrig, president of DuPont do Brazil and chair of the board on Integrare. Ulbrig embraced the idea of a summit to be held in August and indicated that the other board members would embrace the idea as well. Ulbrig talked about the value of the inclusion movement from the view of corporate Brazil. He indicated that the business case argument for inclusion had taken hold in Brazil, as it has here in the U.S. Specifically, Clarence Smith, co-founder of Essence magazine has developed a project to establish an airline between Miami, Fla. and Salvador, Bahia, in the northeast of Brazil. Bahia is the center of African culture in Brazil and a frequent tourist destination for African Americans. Currently, no direct flights occur between the U.S. and this region of Brazil. Smith's theory is that a direct route to the area will exponentially increase the number of African Americans traveling to the area.